It has been known for decades that scaling laws in laser-matter interactions favor mid-IR lasers: the ponderomotive energy of an electron, the high harmonic single-atom cutoff and the critical power for self focusing all scale quadratically with the driving wavelength. Fortunately, in recent years our team pioneered new technologies for high-energy mid-infrared (IR) pulse generation at wavelengths >1µm. In conjunction with advances in computation, this has allowed us to uncover new regimes in strong field science. Most importantly, this work went well beyond simply validating our understanding of scaling laws, by uncovering fundamentally new phenomena that make the mid-IR region even more exciting.
Our research plan is to harness recent advances in mid-IR laser science to advance four related research thrusts:
THRUST 1: Enhancing particle acceleration with mid-IR lasers
THRUST 2: High harmonic waveforms driven by mid-IR lasers
THRUST 3: Exploiting nonlinear mid-IR propagation
THRUST 4: Multi-millijoule, ultrafast, mid-IR lasers at 1-10μm
